FAQ

• Introduction
• Ymir
• Races
• Animals
• The Ymirian Council of Mages
• Gods

Introduction

The world of Ymir exists in a delicate balance of Good and Evil. On the side of Good are the talismans Vanir, Lormir and Aynir. On the side of Evil is a world-devouring entity called The Chaos, which is sealed in a volcano known as the Abyss, in the Mountains of Ice and Fire. As long as The Chaos remains sealed, the talismans stay hidden in the world. If The Chaos is released the talismans reappear, but can only be found by three Magical Girls from another world, who must be summoned by the Ymirian Council of Mages. The girls must restore the balance of Ymir by using the talismans to seal The Chaos back into the Abyss. Once they've done that, they can return to their world. If they fail, they perish with the world they tried to save. Only girls can use the talismans, for The Chaos is male energy, and male energy must be fought with female energy. The Chaos has been released twice in Ymir's history and sealed again by the Magical Girls. Each time the girls were summoned, the talismans took a different form, having evolved to fight the Chaos even as the Chaos evolved to survive against their power.

An era of war between Fairies and Humans followed the last battle with the Chaos. Since then Ymir enjoyed a long period of peace, during which the ancient evil and the Magical Girls who fought it slipped quietly into the realm of myth. Meanwhile, the Chaos evolved in the Abyss...

Until an Ice Fairy Lord named Silverfrost set it free.

Map of Ymir created with the Mapmaker font and art package from The Scriptorium.

Ymir

Ymir is mostly water, with a gigantic continent plunked onto it. Ymir is a bit like El Hazard in that the colors aren't the same for things as they are here. Lots of pastels and oddly-shaped foliage. Leaves can be any color, as can bark, though dirt is pretty much the same color as ours. The rocks tend toward sparkly crystal surfaces and many gemstones really do have magical properties. Ymir has a wide variety of climates and topography, just like Earth. The humans of Ymir look like humans of our world, but they can work powerful magic. Aside from humans, Fairies and Elves are the most predominant intelligent life. There are Fire Fairies and Ice Fairies, as well as the less powerful Lesser Fairies: Earth Fairies, Wood Fairies and Water Fairies (a subset of Ice Fairies). As for the Elves, there are Wood Elves and Dark Elves (who are called that, not because they're evil or dark-skinned but because they live underground). There are four kingdoms on Ymir, which correspond to the four cardinal directions:

Ysgard

It lies in the south of Ymir and is ruled by Humans, who are the dominant species in the region, though there are many Lesser Fairies living there. It's heavily forested, well-watered and full of exotic wildlife. Ysgard usually has a tropical climate, but the growing proximity of The Chaos is making it colder. The capital is Ysgard.

The architecture of Ysgard is sort of south Florida or Caribbean: White with bright colors or tropical pastels. Soft, rounded corners with frescos and mosaics for decoration. Lots of plants, fountains and colorful birds and animals. This is a very wealthy nation.

The clothing is lightweight, usually muslin, cotton or silk and is sort of traditional Indian or Pakistani in style. Women wear close-fitting pants and long, soft jacket, or something like a sari. The men favor soft vests over billowy shirts and loose-fitting pants.

Fria

The realm of the Ice Fairies. It's in the north and extremely mountainous. The Chaos is creeping through the mountains, and many of the Ice Fairies have succumbed to its evil influence and joined Silverfrost's forces. The capital is Ice Hold.

Ice Fairies live inside the mountains. What you see from the outside is a fairy tale style castle with towers and minarets that look like they're made of sugar. Most of the dwelling is behind that, inside the mountain, but what you see on the outside looks like a fancy, delicate confection.

Caldor

The realm of the Fire Fairies. It's in the east and is dominated by a vast desert, bordered by the southeastern arm of the mountains of Fria. At that point, it has a more temperate climate, rather than desert. It's in these mountains that the Hellsgate lies, so it and the Fire Fairies were among the first to fall to The Chaos. The capital is Menrit (mehn-REET).

Fire Fairies live in silky tents and wander about their desert country. Fire Fairy tents are usually dark red, yellow, black and/or brown and decorated with carved bones and/or feathers.
Of the humans in their territory, those who live in the desert are wanderers, and those who live closer to the mountains are farmers. There are a lot of orchards and vineyards in northern Caldor. The biggest human stronghold in Caldor is the city of Eldarys, which lies in the west, about halfway between Caldor's eastern coast and Landsmeet at the center of the continent. Eldarys is an immense walled city, one of the continent's major trading centers and one of the few human cities in Caldor to stand firm against the Fire Fairies, who have always deeply resented human incursions into their territory.

Solona

The western kingdom is ruled by Elves and is split between Wood Elves and Dark Elves. The Wood Elves live on the surface, in Solona's forests. The Dark Elves live underground, like the Sidhe of old Irish legends. The two get along quite well most of the time and are enjoying an era of unprecedented peace when our story begins. There are also a number of Lesser Fairies living in Solona. The capital is Ilanir.

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Races

Fairies

Fairies are little people with wings, almond-shaped eyes and pointy ears. Silverfrost/Lord of Darkness is considered tall at 5-feet. There are two kinds of Fairies in Ymir: Greater Fairies and Lesser Fairies.

Greater Fairies

Ice Fairies

Ice Fairies rule the mountainous northern kingdom of Fria. They have very pale skin, pale blue eyes and white hair. They specialize in spells involving water and cold. You'd think these people would freeze to death in the filmy, little outfits they wear, but they keep warm with a spell that's cast onto their clothing. They favor white, silver and pale blue for clothing colors (and just about everything else). A warrior's armor is made of finely wrought silver chain links (so small, it's hard to see them with the naked eye) and is usually encrusted with the same crystal used for the rest of the armor. It's not silver as humans know it but a harder metal the Ice Fairies also call silver. So humans call it Fairy Silver. The rest of the ensemble is made of hard crystal and varies in design from very plain and subdued to over-the-top numbers like Silverfrost wears.

Fire Fairies

Fire Fairies rule the desert kingdom of Caldor in the East of Ymir. They have red hair, red eyes and tan skin. They specialize in fire spells. Fire Fairies wear filmy clothes, like their northern cousins, usually in shades of red, yellow, black or brown. A warrior's chain mail is a black version of Ice Fairy mail, with armor allegedly forged in the fires of the Hellsgate from materials only the Fire Fairies know and won't tell anybody about, but it's almost completely impenetrable. Their capital is Fire Hold, a bit of an oddity for tent-dwelling Fire Fairies because it actually has a solid defensive wall around it made of the same stuff as Fire Fairy armor. The wall and permanent city came into being during the great war with the humans six hundred years ago. Inside the wall, however, are the usual Fire Fairy tents.

Lesser Fairies
(Can be found in all four kingdoms)

Wood Fairies

Wood Fairies have brown hair, eyes and skin, and love the lush forests of Ysgard and Solona best. They have the power to create illusions and can hide against a background like chameleons. Wood Fairies live like the Wood Elves do and usually close to them, if not with them. They have a long, good relationship. Like all Fairies, they favor those filmy little outfits. Theirs are in woodland colors of browns and greens.

Earth Fairies

Earth Fairies live in all four kingdoms. They specialize in healing magic but it only applies to the physical body. They have black hair, dark skin and black eyes. Earth Fairies live like Dark Elves, only much poorer. They don't like all the glitter and ostentation that so tickle Dark Elf fancies. So an Earth Fairy's home would probably be lined with stone if a real cave isn't available. They're not builders, they're diggers and miners, like Dwarves usually are in fantasy stories.

Water Fairies

Water Fairies are the gentlest and most playful of the Fairy Races and are sometimes seen as flaky by the others. Like Earth Fairies, Water Fairies are healers, but where Earth Fairies can only heal the body, Water Fairies have the ability to heal the spirit. Water Fairies are amphibious, so their wings look more bat-like because they double as fins in the water. They also have extra, clear eyelids and membranes to keep water out of their ears and noses; and they have gills, which they close up when on land, when they use the lungs they don't use in the water. Their hands and feet are webbed. Their underwater dwellings look like the delicate confections Ice Fairies build in the mountains, only underwater. Deep underwater. They favor the ocean, but will occasionally venture into a deep river until they run out of salt water. They really don't like to be in fresh water very much. Their clothing is like fish scales in shimmery jewel colors, mostly blues, greens, purples and silver.

Elves

Tall, nice to look at and really, really old. There are two kinds of Elves and they both live in Solona, Ymir's western kingdom: Wood Elves and Dark Elves.

Wood Elves

They live in the forests of Solona and have light to dark brown hair, hazel eyes and light skin. They live on platforms in the trees, with Japanese-style painted silk screens that can be moved about to block the wind. Wood Elves favor close-fitting, tanned buckskin, decorated with beads and embroidery in forest colors, usually a pattern of leaves or birds.

Dark Elves

Dark Elves live in glittering underground palaces, like the ones the Dagda built for the Sidhe in Irish legend. They have pale hair, hazel eyes and lighter skin than Wood Elves, for spending so much time underground. It's their underground lifestyle that gives them their name. Dark Elves like loose-fitting silks in jewel colors, sort of like the people of Ysgard wear, though the cut is a bit different: Loose pants with a loose, sort of Chinese-style jacket over it, embroidered in gold and silver thread with jewels.

Humans

Just like the ones we have here on Earth. They live in three of the four kingdoms, Fria being the exception, though they're native to Ysgard in the south. The immortals of Ymir don't mind humans as long as they stay in Ysgard and don't try to move into anybody else's country. However, since humans breed like rabbits, they eventually outgrew Ysgard and decided to try and settle in the other territories. Elves are the most tolerant of humans in their lands, probably because there aren't very many humans Solona yet. The Fire Fairies have the biggest gripe and have fought long, bloody wars with the humans who sought to put down roots in Caldor. Eldarys is the only major human city to survive the wars. There are some human settlements, mainly near the mountains of Ice and Fire, where the humans grow crops that the Fairies like to buy. The only humans the Fire Fairies ever really tolerated are the wandering tribes whose lifestyle is very similar to the Fairies' own. For the most part, though humans who live outside of Ysgard or the city of Eldarys have a hard time of it.

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Animals

Most of the animals of Ymir look similar enough to what we have here on Earth that the boys can easily identify them for what they are. Birds have feathers; mammals have fur; fish, lizards and snakes have scales. But the animals are enough off from what we have on Earth that one can't point at a bird with colorful plumage and say with conviction: "that's a parrot". Maybe something more like: "that looks like a parrot". Other than being just a tad different, the wildlife found in the four kingdoms is the sort one might expect to find in those kinds of climates and environments on Earth.

Where we might ride horses or camels, the creatures Humans and Elves ride are a bit different. The desert mounts called Baga (bah-gah) are like camels in that they have the same sort of feet, long legs and long neck, but they don't have humps. Their faces look a bit like a horse's, but with tall, broad ears with tufts on them and wider nostrils. Their tails are like a camel's or a cow's: Long, fleshy bit with a tuft on the end; and they have short, spiky manes that are a darker color than their fur. They have big, dark eyes placed on either side of their heads, like a horse's. Their fur color ranges from tan to palomino, and they have a darker dorsal stripe down their spines, as well as darker stripes on their lower legs.

In non-desert regions, people ride a smaller creature called a Shalla (SHAH-lah) which is about the size of a Quarter Horse and comes in a variety of colors and patterns from black to white and stripes, patches or spots (like a Dalmatian, rather than an Appaloosa). Apart from its size, it more closely resembles a deer or antelope than a horse, and even has small horns on its head, between its ears, like a goat has. The ears are like a horse's, but it has cloven hooves and a tail like the Baga.

Gupa (GOOP-ah) are beasts of burden and all around work animals. They're like our oxen and look like the Brahma cattle of India. They pull wagons and plows, that sort of thing. They range in color from black to light tan.

Fairies can fly, so they don't need any kind of mount, though they utilize Gupa to pull wagons. Fairies don't farm. They buy or trade for food from Humans and Elves, who do grow things.

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The Ymirian Council of Mages

The Council consists of the most powerful mages from each race, including the three Lesser Fairy races (Wood, Earth and Water), so there are eight members in all: Human, Wood Elf, Dark Elf, Ice Fairy, Fire Fairy, Wood Fairy, Earth Fairy and Water Fairy. The office of Council Head rotates every year between each race. What race is in power also dictates the name of the year. For instance, the year the boys are summoned Danna is the Head of the Council, making it The 3,572nd Year of the Human (meaning, it's the 3, 752nd time a Human has lead the Council), or just 3572 Human (35-72 Human). There's a whole astrology that goes with it, but I won't go into that, since it's not important to the story. Here are the members of the current Council:

The Council meets in a stone tower built for that purpose on the spot where the four kingdoms meet at the center of Ymir, a place called (imaginatively enough) Landsmeet. Landsmeet is also what the tower is called, and it houses more than just the Council Chambers. It has the most impressive library in Ymir, as well as an astronomical observatory. The library has magical texts, historical texts and literary works from all four kingdoms. Landsmeet is also considered hallowed ground, a neutral place where countries with disputes can meet under a truce to work out their differences. It's also a place of great power, the heart of Ymir, itself. Because of that, if The Chaos does manage to consume all of Ymir Landsmeet would be the last place it conquers. The tower is round with a parapet on top, rather than a turret or minaret of any sort, for astronomical observations. It's made of gray stone and is rather squat compared to its girth, at just five stories.

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Gods

The different races have their own pantheons of deities, which we'll occasionally hear invoked as the story goes on. The one whose name we'll hear most, thanks to Danna Loden and Syrcie Laisha, is the Human patron Goddess of Summoners: Arianny. When we actually get to see a statue of her, we discover where Danna gets her fashion sense. As Ymir's top Summoner, Danna is also by default Arianny's High Priestess and has duties at the main temple in Ysgard when she isn't busy with her Council work. Now that the Chaos has been released and the magical people from another world have been summoned, she's a little too busy to play priestess but still turns up at the temple when in Ysgard.

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